The inventive subject matter relates to equipment racks, rack mount hardware, and methods of mounting equipment therein.
Racks with provision to mount electronic chassis are commonly used in telecommunications and computer networking applications. A typical data center, for example, may include multiple racks in which equipment chassis, e.g., servers, storage units, power supplies and the like, are inserted and mounted. Such racks commonly include rails that are mounted in horizontally opposed pairs in the rack and provide shelves or ledges that support an inserted equipment chassis. The equipment chassis may be secured in the rack by fastening a front flange thereof to a mating surface of the rack or rails.
Conventional rack mounting arrangements may not provide adequate constraint of movement of the equipment chassis mounted therein. Therefore, significant movement of the equipment chassis may occur when, for example, the rack is being transported or subjected to vibration testing. Conventional techniques for constraining such movement may involve the use of specialized retaining hardware that affixes the rear end of an equipment chassis using loose hardware components that often must be removed when the rack is prepared for use, so that the chassis is freed to slide on the rack rails.